Seismicity and seismic hazard mapping of northern Algeria: Map of Maximum Calculated Intensities (MCI)

Abstract

An earthquake catalogue covering the period1716–2000, comprising 2430 events, has beencompiled for the region lying between3°W-9°E and 31°N-38°N. It results fromraw data of IGN, ISC, USGS and Algeriansources, enabling an input consisting oforigin time H, geographical coordinates(longitude λ and latitudeϕ) and at least one of thefollowing parameters: surface wavemagnitude Ms, body wave magnitude Mb,epicentral intensities Io. Empiricalrelations permit transformations of Mb andMs into Io. The output consists in H,λ, ϕ, Ms, Mb, Io, and focal depth h whichis fixed to 10 km. The number ofevents falls to 1458 characterised by Ms≥ 3.3 and Mb ≥ 3.6, or Io ≥III. The fixed depth is suggested by thebest documented Algerian macroseismic mapsthat also lead to an empirical intensityattenuation law. A first application ofthis catalogue allows the drawing up of anupdated Seismicity and a MaximalCalculated Intensities (MCI) Maps ofAlgeria. The MCI map is obtained by usingthe empirical attenuation law: theintensities inferred by the whole eventsconstituting the catalogue are computed atnodes of a 5×5-km grid covering the area ofstudy. The corresponding maximum value isassigned to each node. The MCI map producedthat way gives precise spatial informationin comparison with Maximum ObservedIntensities (MOI) maps obtained in previousmacroseismic studies. This document may beuseful in mapping the seismic hazard inNorthern Algeria, without attachingprobabilities to ground-motionparameters.